In my early weeks of new motherhood, I would look at my tiny little baby and cry in amazement. I would stare at her and say, “I can’t believe I made you. I can’t believe you came out of me. I thought I wasn’t strong enough, but I was.”
Christians throughout the world just wrapped up the season of Lent - fasting, penance, and asceticism - and moved into celebrating the joy of Easter - resurrection, hope, feasting, and light.
The pandemic, too, hints at mellowing in the near future. Vaccines become more widely available, the world begins to open, and summer and warmer temperatures glimmer in our line of sight.
Over and over again, we pass through moments in our lives that feel dark. We are overcome with sickness, whether physical or mental. We feel the weight of injustice in the world. We long to be with our friends and loved ones. We are burdened by assignments or tasks that seem insurmountable. And in those moments, it feels as if these things will never end, that they are too heavy to handle.
It is precisely in these moments that we must remember slowness. The baby will come. Lent will end. Life will return to normal. The arc of the universe does bend toward justice.
As we wrap up the semester and move toward finals, I invite you to take a pause in your day, to set aside 15 minutes, and to meditate on the following poem. Trust in the slow work of God; let your ideas mature gradually; and try to accept the anxiety of feeling yourself - and feeling the world - in suspense and incomplete.
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin SJ
